Pressure Off in EU-Iran Nuke Showdown

"It is still not the end game. Look to June," a European diplomat close to the talks told AFP. But in Tehran on Thursday a key Iranian negotiator said the Islamic Republic was "very pessimistic" on the eve of new talks since the European Union has been dragging its feet.

"Up until now and from the start of the process (in December), especially since the Paris meeting (March 23), the Europeans have not undertaken any serious step to bring it to a close," said Hossein Mussavian, spokesman for the negotiating team.

"If this tendency is confirmed and the Europeans do not change their attitude, I am very pessimistic," he told AFP.

In The Hague, Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said that if there were no agreement or the talks collapsed, "it is our right to restore the program" of uranium enrichment which has currently been halted for the duration of the talks.

Iran accusses EU Three of dragging heels

Iran is waiting for an answer from EU negotiators Britain, Germany and France to a proposal that would allow Iran to enrich uranium, a process that makes fuel for nuclear reactors but in highly refined form what can be the explosive core of atom bombs.

The European trio is holding fast, however, to its position that Iran must give up on all nuclear fuel activity in order to provide "objective guarantees" that it will not make atomic weapons, diplomats said.

The United States, which backs the EU diplomatic initiative but is not party to the talks, charges that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons and must be kept from obtaining the weapons breakout capability which enrichment represents.

Presidential elections put deal on hold

Diplomats said the Iranians will not be able to make a deal on the nuclear issue until they have chosen a president on June 17, with the West hoping that former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (photo, left), who is still mulling his candidacy, will be elected and will be a pragmatist.

"With wider support from the mullahs, he might be able to make moves," a European diplomat close to the talks said.

The diplomat said the talks were in fact in a holding pattern but that neither side "can trumpet this and say to the world we are in a holding mode now."

A second European diplomat, also close to the talks, said that while Iran may try to provoke some sort of crisis, it would not "in the midst of a presidential election make a strategic political decision to try to change the terms of this whole (negotiating) process."

Iran suspended enrichment last November as a confidence-building measure to start the talks the following month with the EU, which offers Tehran trade, security and technology rewards if it makes the suspension permanent.

Centrifuge production has ominous overtones

According to the text of the proposal, read to AFP by a diplomat close to the talks, the Iranians seek the "assembly, installation and testing of 3,000 centrifuges in Natanz," the site where Iran wants to build an enrichment plant and has already set up a pilot project of 164 centrifuges.

A sequence, or cascade, of about 2,000 centrifuges could make enough highly enriched uranium in a year to make one atom bomb, experts say.

The first European diplomat said the Europeans will get a "no" to this on Friday but "camouflaged as well as possible."

"The Europeans will say they are ready to discuss the proposal but not adopt it," the diplomat said. The diplomat said the idea was to keep the talks going through the elections.

The second diplomat said the European position remained that "for objective guarantees, the Europeans see nothing other than that Iran stops its fuel cycle activities."